Zdrastvuitye!
This week has been so crazy and so busy! Many adventures and interesting experiences! Thankfully I'm over whatever illness possessed me last week. I still have a little bit of a cold but it's been so freezing here that the snot literally freezes in my nostrils. Not even exaggerating. At least I don't have to worry about blowing my nose.
Anyways... Sister Johnson and I have had many.... different experiences with our investigator named Keira. She's the one who's 17 and is married, which we have confirmed is legit. She has legal custody of herself... so weird. That's besides the point. Apparently there was a crazy incident at her school with somebody cutting themself and then there was a thief prowling the halls at the same time... I don't really know. It was kind of hard to understand. One way or another, the theify blame was placed on Keira. To make the story short, let's just say she got mad and broke one of the finger pointer's noses and got expelled. Ever since then she's been in a strange spell of depression and has been really hard to get into contact with, which isn't good because she has a baptismal date set for this week. This is her third baptismal date, but both Sister Johnson and I feel good about this one. Thankfully she's starting to soften up again and I know that she will get back on the right path soon enough.
Remember Andrei the witch doctor? Yeah... he's back at it again with his cray cray visions. I'm not even going to tell you what this one was because it is so blasphemous. Anyways, we visited him this week and showed him the new Christmas video that the church released. Haven't seen it yet? Watch it. I seriously love this video! It's so beautiful and we thought it would touch his little witch doctor heart, but alas... it did not. He stared at the screen blankly the whole time and then expressed that he didn't feel anything when it was over. The senior couple that we brought with us on the lesson looked repulsed when he said that it didn't have any effect on him. I have never seen such a judgmental look of disgust come from such a sweet Senior Sister. I'm fairly confident that Andrei can't read very well, and that's probably why he didn't get anything from the message. He was pretty feisty during the lesson, so maybe he was just sleep deprived. All he does is sleep and make dream catchers, but maybe he stayed up late working on the "hydrogen generator" that he showed us when we got there. It's literally composed of one bottle with dirt in it and another bottle with water in it attached with a plastic tube and a bunch of scotch tape. Super official. He'll come around some day.
Funny translations!!!! So there's this guy in our Branch named Brat (pronounced brAHt not brat) Vinegradov, which literally translates to Brother Grapes. For the past week I have been calling him Brother Grapes whenever Sister Johnson and I talk about him in our apartment and it literally makes her want to do mean things to me. I can't help it... it's too funny. Also, there's another man in our Branch names President Bleenkov which literally translates to President Pancakes. Guess what I call him?? Your guess is probably valid.
Let me just say I am so glad that missionary work requires a lot of walking because Sister Johnson and I have eaten at two fast food places this week. 2. I have never eaten at so many American fast food places even in America. We ate at KFC one day and then the next day we ate at Subway. KFC in Russia has things on the menu that they don't have in America. Our Mission President is obsessed with this thing called a BoxMaster... say it in a Russian accent and that's what it's called in Russian. Anyways it's literally just a ginormous chicken wrap with mayo, lettuce, tomato, chicken, and a big old hash brown in it. Why the hash brown? Because Russia. I don't know. It's actually really good... not gonna lie. When we went to Subway, we actually went with a potential investigator so that we could eat and talk about the gospel. Didn't work out too well. Her name was Anastasia and all she wanted to talk about was what age people get married and get pregnant in America. Really weird. She totally shot down any idea of reading the Book of Mormon. She didn't even consider reading it. Not even a thought.
So our Branch is compiling a choir in order to put on a Christmas program for the community. The idea is that we as missionaries will be able to use it as a finding activity. So far, the practices haven't been super successful at finding people. At the last practice, there were literally 4 members, 1 investigator, and about 5 or 6 sets of missionaries. All sounded terrible. We are singing Carol of the Bells for one of the pieces and that song is FAST. Try singing it in Russian. Not easy. I mostly just mumble through the words and blurt out the ones that I do know. So beautiful.
Sister Johnson and I have been trying to get better at meeting with active members so that we can strengthen relationships with them, so this week we visited with a member named Tatiana. Last time we visited her, we had just started a fast with the other missionaries and she was super offended that we wouldn't eat her food. Tatiana always stuffs us full of cake, candy, tea, and random fruits. We made sure to not offend her this time, so we willingly consumed her cake, candy, tea, and random fruits. Tatiana is literally the Aurora Branch missionary mommy. If our scarves aren't on right, if our coat isn't zipped up all the way, if we're not wearing gloves and hats, or if anything is wrong with our appearance, she fixes it. She also gives us food every week at church. Love her to death. Anyways, when we visited her this week, she freaked out when she heard me coughing a little bit as a result of my illness. She ran into her closet and grabbed a bag of random, sketchy looking herbs. When we asked her what kind of herb it was, all she said was that it was from the forest. Random herbs from the forest.... not about that life. Tatiana gave me instructions on how I'm supposed to steep them to make a cough remedy. Love her. Hopefully they aren't actually sketchy herbs.
Well... that's all folks! Let's hope I don't get high from Russian tea! Have a wonderful week!
Do Svidanya!
Love,
Cectpa Wagstaff
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